ABSTRACT
The reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (2004) incorporates a revised framework to address more efficiently individual learning needs and contribute to identifying students with learning disabilities. This revised framework is referred to as Response to Intervention (RTI). RTI is a multi-tiered system aimed at identifying students with learning and behavior difficulties early on and then assuring that they are provided with appropriate interventions to meet their learning needs. Students move through successive levels of intervention based on inadequate response to previous, less intensive interventions (Vaughn and Fuchs, 2003). Conceptually, the RTI framework is based on the following components: (a) preventing school failure, (b) providing universal screening to identify students who are at-risk, (c) using ongoing progress monitoring, and (d) providing three tiers of instructional support (Vaughn and Fletcher, 2012). As a result of these components, students are provided with research-based, high-quality instruction delivered in the general education classroom (Tier 1), thus providing assurances that students who are behind have been given opportunities to learn. Universal screening identifies students who may need more intensive instructional or behavioral support; those students receive a more intensive research-based intervention in small group settings (Tier 2) in addition to Tier 1 instruction. Data collected via ongoing progress monitoring allows educators to track individual student progress and move Tier 2 students who are minimal responders to even more intensive intervention (Tier 3); data collected may also be used for special education referrals and possible identification.
